NATO Could Send U.S. Troops to Eastern Europe

NATO troops, including Americans, could be deployed to Eastern Europe in an effort to shore up defenses in allied countries that share a border with Russia, a top U.S. military official said Wednesday.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said if troops are deployed to Eastern Europe he couldn’t “write off the involvement of any nation, to include the United States.” Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, has been given until Tuesday to propose measures the 28-country alliance may take in response to the ongoing presence of Russian troops along the border with eastern Ukraine, the Associated Press reports. Other countries that border Russia to the east include Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

“Essentially what we are looking at is a package of land, air and maritime measures that would build assurance for our easternmost allies,” Breedlove said.

Breedlove said Moscow’s plans for its force of roughly 40,000 near eastern Ukraine are not known, but that the contingent “has all the provisioning and enabling that it needs to accomplish military objectives if given them.”